


Mediation

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [74]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Humor, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23964238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: Rex makes some new friends.  One of them is Cut Lawquane
Series: Soft Wars [74]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 51
Kudos: 505





	Mediation

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from realityhoudini on Tumblr. This kinda went off the rails...
> 
> Now with [Rex and Eeopie Fives Art](https://thellamacorn.tumblr.com/post/617072629803843584/look-i-drew-rex-and-fives-the-eeopie-this-was) by the awesome [@thellamacorn](https://thellamacorn.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr!

When they go they leave him with the eeopie.

For one shining moment Rex had thought Kix would have given in to temptation and punched him in the head. Leave him with the eeopie _and_ a concussion.

He’d earned _the_ _look_ from Kix again, the look that said he could treat concussions but not stupid. The look that said he was quite willing to dole out the former to prevent the latter. It was the clenched fist, primarily, that had made Rex lay back down, not Kix pulling medical rank. He’d just been shot in the chest, he didn’t need to add a lovingly-applied head injury to that.

Jesse had quietly made a whipped noise and Rex, with no malice whatsoever in his heart, had promptly put him in charge of the squad.

“Keep making me proud, Lieutenant,” he’d drawled and the sour look he got was better than any bacta for his nerves.

(As if Rex _hadn’t_ noticed the way Jesse promptly took command the moment Rex was thrown from his speeder. As if Rex’s flashes of consciousness the entire ride hadn’t featured Jesse deciding where they would head, negotiating room for the night. As if Jesse doesn’t always, _always_ step up to whatever challenge Rex puts in front of him, regardless of how he grumbles about it.)

Hardcase had nudged one of Rex’s pistols by his right hand almost apologetically. Only one, because Rex couldn’t control his left hand enough to move, let alone fire.

“Go,” Rex had ordered when his command squad starts running out of ways to delay. “I’ll follow in the morning. Don’t let Cody make us look bad.”

He hadn’t needed to repeat the order Kenobi had given him, to retreat if they see Grievous and call for help. Jesse heard it same as Rex. Just like Rex, he’ll follow, if that makes sense. If it makes sense to shoot first, Rex can trust that Jesse will know that too.

They had filed out, shoulder to shoulder and falling into formation the way they’ve done a hundred thousand times before. Jesse on point, Kix and Hardcase flanking. They don’t even have to speak anymore. Rex nearly couldn’t breathe through the curl of pride. They’ve come _so far_.

So they leave, onward to the mission. They leave Rex with his thoughts, an ache in his chest, an alarming _lack_ of ache in his left arm where the nerves are damaged, and a herd of curious eeopie.

_Incredibly_ curious eeopie.

“Off!” One of the littler adults, this one a shade more green than it’s peers is the worst offender, Rex thinks. Never deterred for more than a few minutes at a time. It meets his eyes and slowly, deliberately, raises it’s trunk. “Do _not_ even try-”

It bops him right on the mouth. It feints first, of course. Aims for his chest and when his arm is distracted blocking there it goes right for his face.

“You _undercooked ration,_ ” Rex snarls. Eeopie, Rex has to remind himself, _can’t laugh_. They don’t have the lungs or facial structure for it. This little shebs1 is trying its damnest to give lie to that. It dances right out of Rex’s reach, honking as it goes.

Rex started calling it Fives an hour ago.

“Look,” Rex says with extreme patience. “This isn’t _nearly_ as funny as you seem to think-”

Eeopie Echo, a quiet, dark-brown thing, sidles up to Rex’s left and taps an unpleasantly wet snout into Rex’s armpit.

Rex is enormously grateful his command isn’t here to see him yell, _manfully_ yell _not_ shriek, and flail off the bench. He kicks a toolbox on the way down and the rattling clangs of jostled metal filling the barn only adds to the overall humiliation of the fall. He’d only need a tooka screaming angrily in the background, and maybe some sudden dust clouds and some glass breaking, to complete the stereotype.

He lands heavily on the dirt-packed ground. It jars his left arm; the nerves have finally healed just enough to _really karking hurt_. Rex wrestles himself up to sitting, shoulder braced against the leg of the bench enough to keep him upright.

Eeopie Fives promptly bops him in the eye.

“I bet you’re delicious,” Rex says as pleasantly as he’s able. “Grass fed, maybe even organic. Few pesticides all the way out here. You’d be tender enough to grill.” Eeopie Fives honks.

Eeopie Echo sinks belly-down and inches closer in the single most unsubtle sneak ever attempted by a mammal.

Another eeopie decides it is perfectly reasonable to park its neck across Rex’s knees and present its earholes for scratches. Its head is mottled gray and almost half the size of Rex’s entire torso. “You’ll be Ponds, then,” Rex proclaims, unimpressed. One brown eye rolls up to observe him, and the thing nudges its head at his hand pointedly. Rex gives in before it jostles him enough to dislodge his bacta patch.

Eeopie Echo finally completes it’s dastardly plan, and eels up to lean heavily against Rex’s leg and falls into a snuffling sleep. Eeopie Fives, meanwhile, figures out Rex won’t spend the effort to swat him if he stays away from Rex’s face and wound; it pokes its way down Rex’s arm and across his chest before getting bored and slumping over mostly on top of Eeopie Echo to poke occasionally at Rex’s knee.

Something Rex can’t twist enough to see wanders up and licks the back of his head. Rex hasn’t even made it all the way through a yell of offense before it sniffs derisively and wanders off. “And we also have Wolffe,” Rex grouses. There’s a disgustingly wet trail up his neck and the curve of his skull, rapidly cooling in the night air. Whenever he moves to wipe it clean Eeopie Ponds starts whining like he’s kicked it until he keeps petting its head. He decides it’s just not worth the hassle.

Rex is fiercely glad none of Torrent Command is here to see this.

At first the footsteps, when he hears them, are almost welcome. Almost.

When Rex fell, he left his blaster up on the bench. He regrets not prioritizing going back for it. Careless, he’ll have earned whatever judgment Kix decides to level on him next. Rex tenses, but the steps belong to a man, not a droid, and men can be reasoned with.

“I would like it on record that they started it,” Rex says, when it seems like the man freezes right at the door of the barn. “And if you’re going to kill me please lie to my squad and tell them I didn’t die under nine hundred pounds of pack animal.”

“I can claim you put up a fight,” says a very familiar accent and intonation. Rex brow wrinkles in confusion. A vod? Here? Rex’s squad should have been the only ones in this area. “If that would make you feel better. Glory in battle, isn’t it?”

There’s enough bitterness under that cheer to drown, well, an eeopie. Eeopie Ponds whines and Rex returns to petting it, motions mechanical.

“Dead’s dead,” he says carefully, treads carefully. This might not be a droid, but Rex somehow gets the feeling that he’s in no less danger for it. Two can keep a secret if one is a corpse, and Rex gets the sudden feeling his presence here might be more than inconvenient. “I just don’t want my SiC to win the pot on how I go. He’ll be unbearable and my troopers don’t deserve that.”

There’s a long, long pause. Rex has carefully shifted, gotten enough traction under his toes that he can dodge just enough, maybe buy himself a second or two to get to his blasters.

He’ll hate to use Eeopie Ponds as a shield, but needs must.

The man sighs, clicks sharply. The eeopies reluctantly peel themselves away and off of Rex, ambling over to empty pens. Eeopie Fives grumbles the whole way.

Rex isn’t surprised at the face he finds staring back at him. He isn’t surprised at the defeat and hopelessness in his eyes that doesn’t match the smile on his face. The missing husband then. A vod, a deserter. A man who just had to talk himself out of killing a brother to keep his secret. One who maybe hasn’t all the way talked himself out if it, yet.

“Thanks, appreciate it.”

It’s clear the vod expects something different, something more. He expects judgment and recrimination. He wants Rex to give voice to the guilt in his own mind. Rex has always found that people would judge themselves far more harshly than Rex ever could, so why would Rex waste the effort?

Like a lot of vod Rex has known, this one isn’t comfortable with extended silence.

“I suppose this means the war’s found it’s way out here,” he muses with studied casualness. His grip on his polearm gives him away: his knuckles are clenched white. “Wouldn’t have thought there’d be anything here worth fighting over.”

Rex knows the moment he notices Rex’s shell, clocks the command mark outlining his visor. The vod swallows, straightens, braces. “Sir.” His fingers creak from his grip on his weapon. He holds it like he knows how to use it for more than just herding animals.

He’s got reach, but there’s enough between them for cover. If Rex can-

Something unpleasantly warm slurps into Rex’s navel.

Rex has a moment of pure, wide-eyed disbelief before he staggers, _swears_ blue and vicious. “Karking _Fives_ I will _stew_ _you_ _slowly_ and enjoy every second of it you _kriffing-_!” Eeopie Fives hustles a retreat honking in a way that _must_ be laughter, regardless of what the scientific community believes of eeopie intelligence.

The vod is startled into laughter of his own, and it gets more real when Rex levels him the same dirty look he gave the grazer.

“Fives?” he asks. His polearm loosens in his grip.

“One of my troopers. They have _very similar_ personalities,” Rex snaps. When he gets back to the fleet he’s going to make human Fives run laps until he hurls, out of petty spite. Maybe the universe will let both pests feel each other’s pain.

“You all have names, then.” That? That’s the sort of statement bloated with uncomfortable meaning. Rex has heard similar things before. He’s _never_ heard it from a vod, never known a vod who would have had to ask. Wherever this one was from, they didn’t take good care of him, did they?

Rex gives the same response he’d give to any civilian or a senator or a nat-born officer. “People generally do.”

Something in that decides him. Carefully, the vod returns the polearm to a rack cut for it, just inside the barn doors. Rex repays trust for trust: he quietly replaces the chisel he’d palmed from the toolbox.

“Rex,” he offers, “Of Torrent.”

“Lawquane,” the vod returns. “Cut Lawquane. You hungry, Rex of Torrent?”

“Is eeopie on the menu?”

Cut Lawquane laughs, and his children swarm the barn in time to ensure Rex can’t refuse.

In the morning, Rex armors up and stops dead in the Lawquane’s front yard. Cut smiles with an innocent face better than any Rex has ever seen.

Eeopie Fives dances eagerly under its saddle and waves its trunk.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Ass/asshole. Back  
> I rewatched this episode this morning. I found it very interesting that Cut was surprised Rex had a name. Very, very interesting, and very, very sad.


End file.
